Cover Crop Research

It is amazing how much interest there is in cover cropping these days!

Sarah Carlson from Practical Farmers of Iowa and I were discussing this fact in Omaha, NE earlier this week. To think that there would be a conference like we attended in Omaha was almost a “dream” when we were attending some of the first Midwest Cover Crop Council Meetings less than 10 years ago. Many thanks to Eileen Kladivko, Dale Mutch, Dean Baas, Tom Kaspar, Anne Verhallen, Alan Sundermeier, and others who set the pace and path and vision for sharing and researching the benefits of cover cropping.

I had the privilege of speaking to over 1,000 farmers at the National No-Till Conference in Springfield, IL in January 2014. Being a long-time no-tiller; this was a highlight of my career.

So, where am I these days? (kind of like “Where’s Waldo?) Over the past seven weeks I have spoken in many states (NY, OH, WI, NE, MI, etc…) and at Ridgetown, Ontario. I have spoken to well over 2,000 producers these past 50 days. I keep telling my wife I’ll check in as often as possible and I try to keep the kids aware of where I am and where I am going (I use this as great geography lessons!). The interest in cover cropping is astounding. I am excited to see so many producers that are using cover crops are excited about what they are doing…I am 100% confident this is NOT a fad.

I have a few more cover crop meetings to add that you might find very interesting.

Starting on March 6 the American Society of Agronomy is conducting a number of Cover Crop webinars. The speakers on the presentations are among the “who’s-who” in cover cropping research and practice. Please register and watch these free webinars!

Also in Wisconsin I am speaking at three Legacy Seeds Cover Crop Seminars. Please contact the folks at Legacy Seeds at karen@legacyseeds.com to preregister. Registrations starts at 9:30 and the meetings start at 10 AM. Early order “discounts” will be available. Lunch will be served at each location.

Also, sometime in April – Robison Farms (my brother Don and I along with mom and dad) hope to host a field day at our Greenwood, IN farm where we have 5 acres of replicated cover crop research. More details will follow soon on this.

These are exciting times in Agriculture. Remember to be thankful for those who have come before us and for those who share their knowledge and vision with us. More importantly share your vision and knowledge with others. Most importantly, be thankful to the God of Creation who gives us the responsibility to care for His creation.

Join me with Wisconsin NRCS at the Badger Plot Cover Crop Research Site on October 2, 2013 @ Jeff and Jerry Kreuziger Farms near Clyman, WI. Sessions will run from 9:30-Noon or 1:00-3:30 CST. This looks to be a great day to learn more about cover crops and soil health in southern Wisconsin/northern Illinois regions.

Advancing Cover Crop Adoptions Research Agenda

Will corn planted after cover crops consistently out-yield corn planted without cover crops? Research has shown some nice advantage in areas. More research should give farmers more confidence in cover cropping.

Sarah Carlson, Midwest Cover Crop Research Coordinator with Practical Farmers of Iowa and Ryan Stockwell, Agriculture Program
Manager with the National Wildlife Federation have written an agenda that will help researching cover crops be more scientific over the next six to eight years. The research agenda is published in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
ISSN: 2152-0801 online www.agdevjournal.com

If you want to see how cover crops provide a very good ROI across a wide geographic region then this report is for you! Thanks to Rob Meyers from SARE and the folks at CTIC for conducting and publishing this survey. It helps me to see that the results on our home farm (and many of your farms too) were duplicated over a broad area.
Cover crops REALLY help with increasing yield 🙂 (BTW, we are NOT really standing up.)

Here is Rob’s e-mail. Check out the link to see the whole report.

We are releasing today the results of a farmer survey on cover crops that was conducted by SARE and the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC) this past winter. A majority of the surveys were completed by farmers attending Midwest conferences this past winter but we also had some respondents to the online version of the survey from across the U.S. The survey analysis and report development was completed by CTIC under a contract from North Central Region SARE. Questions on the survey were developed with the input of MCCC steering committee members. The report is available online at: http://www.northcentralsare.org/CoverCropsSurvey

Key findings included the following:

During the fall of 2012, corn planted after cover crops had a 9.6% increase in yield compared to side-by-side fields with no cover crops. Likewise, soybean yields were improved 11.6% following cover crops.

In the hardest hit drought areas of the Corn Belt, yield differences were even larger, with an 11.0% yield increase for corn and a 14.3% increase for soybeans.

Surveyed farmers are rapidly increasing acreage of cover crops used, with an average of 303 acres of cover crops per farm planted in 2012 and farmers intending to plant an average of 421 acres of cover crops in 2013. Total acreage of cover crops among farmers surveyed increased 350% from 2008 to 2012.

Farmers identified improved soil health as a key overall benefit from cover crops. Reduction in soil compaction, improved nutrient management, and reduced soil erosion were other key benefits cited for cover crops. As one of the surveyed farmers commented, “Cover crops are just part of a systems approach that builds a healthy soil, higher yields, and cleaner water.”

Farmers are willing to pay an average (median) amount of $25 per acre for cover crop seed and an additional $15 per acre for establishment costs (either for their own cost of planting or to hire a contractor to do the seeding of the cover crop).

Please help us distribute this information to your colleagues and farmers in your region.

I recently saw a newspaper article “Tracking Phosphorous Fresh from the Farm” written by Spencer Hunt (shunt@dispatch.com) from The Columbus Dispatch Sunday May 26, 2013 9:03 AM and I found it to be a good read. There are great things going on to help farmers do their best to be good stewards of the land and resources.

This excerpt gives the gist of the article:

The study could be key to devising plans to reduce phosphorus runoff from farms. Farm groups, including the Ohio Soybean Council, the Ohio Corn & Wheat Growers Association, and the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, have matched a $1 million USDA grant to fund the effort.

Some of the water that runs from Terry McClure’s Paulding County farm is captured for tests. ERIC ALBRECHT | DISPATCH PHOTOS Image 2 of 3

Congratulations to the great folks in Ohio who are making this happen and thanks to the Columbus Dispatch for reporting on this.

Sometimes apparent myths prove to be true and sometimes they prove to be…myths!

In March 2013 I asked my brother Don Robison from Robison Farms to help me figure out how cover crops might effect soil temperatures. We have looked at data in previous posts trying to answer the question “Do Cover Crops that Survive the Winter Keep the Soil Colder in the Spring than Fall-Tilled Soil?”

Now I have asked Don to chart all of his data that he has taken since late March in fall-tilled soil, no-till soil, no-till soil with cover crop annual ryegrass, and a lawn. Don added a test of taking moisture readings as well because “we know” that no-till soils are “always wetter and colder than fall-tilled soils.” At least that is common “knowledge” from many farmers I talk to from Minnesota to Missouri and points eastward.

Don made some comments that I believe are helpful:

The soil type in the lawn is Miami silt loam, while the fields are Crosby silt loam.

The no-till w/o cover crop test had a compaction layer at ~3-9″ deep in this area in our compaction tests we conducted in 2012. Don’s thought is that where he is doing the tests had a compaction layer closer to the 3″ depth (so there is less percolation).

Don reports “No conclusions yet and maybe there won’t be any, but an interesting trend I’m starting to see is that in this cool wet spring, the conventional tillage does not seem to be living up the reputation of being warmer and easier to till in the spring than no till. That may very well change when the rainfall and temperatures become more like you would expect to see in the planting season.”

Data reveals that cover crops do not appear to be keeping the soil colder.

It appears that our no-till soils with cover crops has consistently been warmer or just as warm as the fall-tilled soils. I am placing the charts below for you to observe the data.

While that may not mean much to my eastern corn belt friends it means a lot in Iowa and the upper Midwest.

Working with Sarah Carlson from Practical Farmers of Iowa and Tom Kaspar from ARS at Ames, Iowa, we’ve been attempting to identify what cover crops will be most compatible with common Iowa farming practices – in particular the use of longer season corn hybrids and soybean varieties, as well as an abundance of corn after corn (CAC) management strategies. Establishing cover crops like radishes and annual ryegrass into these situations hasn’t proved to be easy.

Aerial application of cover crops (annual ryegrass, crimson clover, radishes, etc.) into corn in Ohio and Indiana has been very successful. However, in Iowa it has not worked with quite as much success. Cereal rye may actually be the best alternative. While it may seem a bit “simple” to plant mainly cereal rye most years, there are significant benefits to using cover crop rye in a corn after corn scenario, mainly because it has been shown to reduce Goss’s wilt.

September 5, 2011 planted Annual Ryegrass compared to Winter Cereal Rye in central Iowa in April 2012. Note the dramatic difference in winterhardiness even after a very mild winter.

Sarah commented that besides using more winterhardy species for greater success, it is also very important to not interseed the cover crops into green corn or green soybeans. She says, “Pushing radishes with aerial seeding into a dense, dark corn or soybean canopy is unsuccessful.”

But if the right cover crop is used in Iowa and managed well then covers work very well! Rod Swoboda from Wallaces Farmer published an article written by Sarah Carlson reflecting work that was overseen in Iowa by PFI.

The corn is now harvested at Robison Farms in rural Greenwood, IN and we are pleasantly surprised.

Accurate Yield Estimates

We actually achieved a somewhat higher yield than the hand check “guesstimate” that my brother Don and I made back in August. We reported this yield in the blog post Cover Crops Provide Improved Corn Yields in On-Farm Trial . The actual yield was 107 bushels per acre across the whole field and our estimate was in the 105+ bushels range.

This gives me confidence that the differentiation we showed in the yield in the different cover crops and cover crop mixes was pretty accurate. As you will see on the blog post there were some mixes that yielded more than 50 bushels per acre better than the no-cover crop check.

Impressive Root Structure and Soil Moisture

Would the whole field have averaged 50 bushels per acre better if it had all been in cover crops in 2012? I doubt it.

But I think it would probably have been quite a bit better than what the field averaged without cover crops. Here’s why:

Better Root Growth

Greater Amount of Soil Moisture

One reason that I think there would have been a significant yield increase over the whole field is because of what Don and I found when we dug up some plants. We found more moisture and more roots where we had cover crops versus where we had no cover crops.

In the non-cover crop area:

In the cover crop area:

It was distinctly more moist (like comparing a fairly dry sponge versus a sponge that had not been submerged in water for 2 months).

This corn plant was dug up in the area where we had a cover crop mix in mid-August 2012 under severe drought conditions. Note the additional root and the moistness of the soil compared to the photo to the right.

This corn plant was dug from the non-cover crop check area with a pick-ax and shovel. The ground was compacted, hard, and very dry. It is amazing that the corn looked as good as it did!

Don Robison holding up a corn plant from the cover crop plot area that had Austrian Winter Peas and Radishes. Look at the root-ball and moisture compared to the next photo.

Don is not working near as hard to hold this corn plant from the non-cover crop check area. The root ball was smaller and the soil was much drier. I’m not sure why Don was smiling. Most of the 50 acre field did not have cover crops! Like Dad would sometimes say, “get that smile off your face!”

Earthworms

As Don and I were digging in the areas where we had cover crops we were pleased to find earthworms. There were no earthworms to be found in the non-cover crop check area.

This field has been no-tilled for most of the last 20 years and we usually find earthworms, but it was so hot and dry that I assume the worms either died (fried) or went deep into cooler, more moist soil (this year that may have been 5-6 feet deep). But again, we found some earthworms in the cover crop plot area.

In retrospect, we should have compared soil temperatures on the day we dug roots and took yield estimates.

An earthworm in the cover crop plot area. Though we did not see many in the plot area we saw none in the non-cover crop check area.

As dry as the summer of 2012 was, it was interesting to find earthworm activity in the area where we had the cover crop plots. There was no such activity evident in the non-cover crop check area.

The Takeaway Message from Robison Farms in 2012

Cover crops can increase corn yield even in very dry years.

Corn following cover crops consistently out yielded corn that was not following a cover crop in hand check yield estimates.

The plots in Indiana and at TNT farms will have soil pits to look at the roots and to see how the soil is benefitting from the cover crops.

I know that there are lots of cover crop field days that I do not list on this site.

However, I usually try to get cover crop field days listed on the Midwest Cover Crops Council website when I hear about them. However, I have four field days that I believe will be attractive to all of my Midwestern cover crop friends.

The first “event” listed below is actually 2 events on back to back days held in neighboring counties.

TNT Farm – Terry Taylor (TNT Farm) is an avid cover cropper and an excellent farmer in down-state Illinois. Terry is hosting a field day on his farm on November 7, 2012 that promises to be an excellent opportunity to learn about using cover crops on heavier soils.

Dudley Smith Farm Beef Cow-Calf Field Day – I will be speaking on The Role of Cover Crops in a Grazing Program in Pana, IL on November 8, 2012. I will be working that day with the “best of the best,” Ed Ballard, who introduced me to cover crops and extending the grazing season while using cover crops. I have spoken in years past at this event and U of I always puts on a great meeting that is very valuable to beef cattle producers.

As harvest winds down it is time to plan for 2013. Please consider attending one of these four meetings to learn more about how cover crops can impact your farming operation.

At the 2011 Cover Crop Field Days in Jasper and Newton County, Indiana, Dan Perkins found a BIG surprise of a radish. It will be interesting to see what is found in the field days this year.